Layers And Layers Of Fact Checkers

The Petraeus story continues to make no sense (just because the FBI is doing a potential criminal investigation in which Petraeus was not a target is no reason for the Attorney General to fail to inform the president that his DCI had some potential security issues as soon as he knew) but I love this:

The sources said agents followed department guidelines that generally bar sharing information about developing criminal investigations. The FBI is also aware of its history under former director Herbert Hoover of playing politics and digging into the lives of public figures.

Is there no depth of the evil of that skinflint Republican president in the minds of the leftist media? Now it turns out that he usurped J. Edgar’s role.

And yes, I took a screenshot. It’ll be interesting to see if they memory hole it, or provide an erratum.

[Update a while later]

OK, according to a commenter, they memory holed it. And indeed they did (just reclick the link above).

The FBI is also aware of its history under former director J. Edgar Hoover of playing politics and digging into the lives of public figures. As one official said, the rules are designed to protect people (both private and elected officials) when negative information about them arises in the course of a criminal investigation that is not a crime.

Don’t forget that when Bill Frist and the Senate Republicans were threatening to use the “nuclear option” to prevent Democrats from filibustering George Bush’s supreme court nominees in 2005, ABC News reported that Senate Republicans had famously filibustered the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964.

When conservative bloggers objected, ABC News changed the language in their report so that it said that “Republican Senator Strom Thurmond and fellow conservatives” had filibustered Civil Rights Bill (obscuring the fact that Strom Thurmond and those “conservatives” were Democrats — though Thurmond became a Republican later in his career).

J. Edgar’s legacy isn’t entirely gone. Apparently the whole thing started because Jill Kelley took time out from sexting Gen. Allen to complain to a nut-job FBI agent friend (the sort of agent who sends topless pictures of himself to harassment complainants) about emails coming from Broadwell. Knowing that he was a right-wing nut, the FBI tried to keep the agent away from the investigation, so he decided it was a big Obama coverup and leaked the whole thing to a GOP congressman, who took it to Eric Cantor, who alerted FBI director Mueller.

And now all the other nuts are sure that it was a cover-up. For the FBI agent it’s mission accomplished — he wanted an Obama scandal so badly that he wished one into existence!

The scorecard so far: Petreaus, Broadwell, Kelley and Allen were weak, tawdry and foolish. The agent was hysterical, incompetent and inappropriate. Obama, Holder, Mueller and Cantor handled a mess like grownups.

You’re the one proposing a conspiracy theory, but regardless of how it all came about everyone on top knew about it (if Obama didn’t he should have fired a number of people by now.) So all this stuff happened over a year ago, but the resignation still happened at the time it did. You just can’t get around that.

Jim, I must admit that the stories are pretty good even if the story tellers lack a bit in credibility. So a “hysterical” agent happens to clobber two generals for genuine wrong-doing. What’s the problem? Why do you think that’s a bad thing?

Someone commented recently that retired military officers are technically subject to prosecution under the UCMJ. I’m not sure how much of a technicality that is, but the CIA has its own rules. An employee who puts himself in a position where he’s vulnerable to blackmail would have to disclose that activity (and lose this clearance) or conceal it and commit a crime. Unless the rules don’t apply to directors, in which case my opinion of the CIA sinks even lower.